St.Albert Gazette Article

ArtWalk takes it to the street

Thursday marks the start of another season of art appreciation downtown

Kaytlyne Dewald at Elevate Activewear

It’s a comic book lover’s dream exhibit. Kaytlyne Dewald is a self-described pop culture artist. She takes comic book pages and superimposes her own pictures of popular characters from the entertainment world. The results are colourful, dramatic and perfect for fanboys and fangirls.

“My work is created due to an uncontrollable passion for the pop culture industry and exploring our relationship with characters and worlds that are created,” she said.

Her parents owned a movie rental store and she was “raised on films.”

“I felt that I developed along with the characters I was watching. At a young age I was exposed to the stories of how Frodo overcame the odds and destroyed the ring, how Harry chose to sacrifice himself for the greater good … to be able to experience the story, by reading the book and then taking that adventure to the next level by being able to watch actors recreate what you invented in your imagination, is a really unique thing.”

Her work is more than simple doodles of a person immersed in movies and comics. She said her oeuvre explores the relationship between pop culture and our society.

This is her way of making people feel something. She has an emotional connection to her subjects, as do many of her viewers. She enhances that connection by using the publications in the background with her own interpretation of the character in the foreground.

“I wanted to show the characters coming out of the book pages bringing new life to images,” Dewald said.

Her subjects include such notable subjects as Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Spider-Man and Alien.